Israeli Representative at Geneva: PLO Has Not Changed Its Stripes

January 1, 1989

GENEVA (Feb. 5)

An unbridled verbal assault on Israel by the Palestine Liberation Organization and its Arab allies was cited by the Israeli delegate to the U.N. Human Rights Commission here as proof that the PLO’s goal is still the destruction of Israel.

There should be no illusions that PLO chief Yasir Arafat and his cohorts have changed their attitude and really desire peace, the Israeli delegate, Rafael Walden, said.

The commission’s annual conference opened last week and will end next month. The first agenda item is “The Violation of Human Rights in the Occupied Arab Territories.”

Walden, speaking Friday after five days of drumbeat attacks on Israel, responded specifically to charges by the PLO representative, Nabil Ramlani, that Israel gassed Palestinians and burned them to death.

Ramlani also charged that Israel stole the organs of deceased Palestinians for transplants and generally matched the Nazis as practitioners of genocide.

“How can anyone listening to the speeches delivered here by the Arabs harbor the illusion that they did a complete about-face and abandoned terrorism and the aim of the destruction of Israel?” Walden asked.

“Those who invent malicious, obscene lies about gas chambers or stealing of organs for transplant can hardly claim to be seeking a peaceful dialogue,” he added.